The beginning of a new year always makes my mind flood with what new ideas can be brought into DMH. I get so many ideas that I actually have to slow them down because I just can’t do everything at once. In fact, I begin to feel anxiety levels rising in me just because there’s too many ideas and not nearly enough resources to do them. So, I step back and start prioritizing them, by thinking which ones are possible and yet will do the most to promote not only growth of DMH, but also promote the mission of David’s Music House. What is our mission? Well, our mission is to help students learn to play and sing music, BUT with the underlying mission to do all we can to insure our students listen to others, help support others, discover confidence within themselves, and to learn to be humble about it. How do they learn all of these other soft-skills? – Through example of their teachers and all who work at David’s Music House. This is WHY I created DMH and it is my job to keep the focus of all, to remember that each of us sets the example of who and how we want our students to become. We use music as our communications tool and we behave as Mentors to our students by not only teaching the notes, but by using music’s ability to touch the human heart and soul and therefore inspire learning of how to take these music skills out into the community and perhaps spread their learned additional skills of kindness and humility to the people they meet. In this way, David’s Music House helps make our world a bit gentler, kinder and caring.

Last year we tweaked the performance learning part of what we teach by breaking down what is usually done in music schools…the “RECITAL”..or dreaded recital as I like to call it. I believe “recitals” serve only to create a huge event where teachers prepare students to perform one song they work on for months, to play it perfectly. They are basically made to feel they must perform this song, without mistakes, in front of many people they don’t know, get it over with, after feeling sick while they wait to take their turn…and all the time, never having gained any learning or experience of actually performing in front of people!!! What The Hell??? So…we launched our Performance Learning in 2018. This seemed so foreign to even my teachers, because everyone has the recital or “showcase” performance so ingrained into their experiences that it has taken a while for my teachers to begin to grasp this new method of training students to Perform.

I created this 3 step method. First I removed our large, monthly Student Showcases, as while they seemed fun, they were actually just becoming large and too much time spent of organizing and containing numbers of performers and audience members we could hold at DMH..and all the while…STILL not teaching students HOW TO PERFORM!

Now, teachers first, take students out onto our stage during a normal lesson, just for a few moments to play a song they are learning, just to get a feel for being on a stage, in front of people. Next, a teacher prepares from one to 5 students, and gets them to perform on our stage any time we are open. I call these Student Open Stage because the term Open Stage implies informal, impromptu and “LEARNING”. They are usually done instead of their usual lesson night, so instead of a private lesson that week, they will perform one of a few songs, and may be helped during the performance by their teachers who may point out, how to stand and use a microphone, how to look out at the audience, how to say a few things to the audience and how to say THANK YOU to an audience for listening to them. This is still a learning experience and as they can play multiple songs and much more often than a large planned event like a Showcase or Recital…they are actually LEARNING HOW TO PERFORM. AFTER a student has gone through multiple Open Stages and has reached a level of skills where they can actually perform songs more perfectly…they can achieve the option to perform a “Showcase” where they or multiple students can perform, with some experience under their belts…a more perfect Showcase of what they can do. The Student Showcase can be thought of as the “Black Belt” level of performance.

We are also introducing our New Expanded Percussion Lessons. With the purchase of a Marimba, we are now offering beginning to advanced Percussion Lessons at DMH. I have wanted to offer these for a long time, to help area schools know of a private school that offers lessons in percussion performance to enhance their orchestra and band percussion skill levels. We will be informing the area schools that we now offer these private lessons.

There are still more exciting ideas to come in 2019! Keep on the watch for them in the monthly DMH Newsletter.

As always, Thank You all for coming to, supporting and spreading the word about what David’s Music House is doing differently!